That or the ol' tan cased dinosaurs.

The gray Dell helped me through many-a "100 Games!" disc...

Dell Dimension 2400. My family had the entry level model, and it still absolutely destroyed every prior computer we’d had performance-wise

I think we had that one.

I maintain dozens of the black & silver Optiplexes, they're used in Raw Thrills arcade games like The Fast and the Furious, Big Buck Hunter Pro, Guitar Hero Arcade... They are workhorses; usually clean it and recap the power supply (which are kind of a bitch to disassemble) and they're good for another few years.

I still run into the blue/grey ones like your picture, but not in use. Usually stored in the basement of a bar.

My personal collection includes a couple of first-generation Optiplexes, the beige GX1. Dell is a bigger part of my life than I ever imagined or hoped. 😅

This was the first desktop I used with a big ol’ chunky CRT. I played around installing so many different windows XP themes

I recorded songs off the radio to cassette

Me as well Some of the things I first downloaded went onto cassette tape.

Can you tell us anything about the professors?

Here!

Kazaa, Kazaa light, WinMX, DC++. I used them all.

My user name stands for KaZaA Lite User 9.

Or trying to re-burn a cdrw but it was originally not burnt with the same soft as yours 😓

🗑️💿🚮💔

I remember the funny lines on the back when I accidentally bumped into the tower or had the subwoofer on as it was burning.

Also holding down on the close-pin on a discman (so it would keep spinning the disc) and differently coloured sharpies were a great way to colourize your collection.

No, the boomers had punch cards. That's an entire other level.

Then you'd get a copy protected disc that wouldn't play at all in the disc man, but you could copy it to a CD-R and that'd play just fine. To disable the copy protection you just hold shift while the cd tray closes.

Packard Bell with the ole pressing F5 on boot beep to run Doom 2.

Better? This was the one I remember running Windows 95. I'm actually shocked at how white this one is. Was everything tinted more back in the 90s? Like going to Mexico in a movie. I feel like it adds a filter.

If they produced an equivalent of That 70s Show today the "very special episode of" would be the one where 9/11 happens.

I remember watching my mom sit and type code for games from magazines. If she made a mistake you’d know it. “MOTHERFUCKER!!!!” rang through the entire place.

Floppy drive. Fancy.

That monitor was really underrated. I used it for decades for game consoles, VCRs, etc. after the C64 went obsolete.

where's your cassette drive

Hey, hey, you gotta tag that as NSFW. So sexy

I'm not even 30 yet and I ripped CDs in my youth. I didn't use limewire though, we would use torrents already at that point.

You fucking were, that's some fancy ass equipment right there.

It’s funny, I finally got one of those and used it once.

As one of the current generation of adults who grew up with afternoon cartoons, G.I. Joes, transformers and all the greatest movies that are so incredibly nostalgic now, I feel internally like I pretty much stopped developing mentally around age 25 and am still "with it" about much of society, but younger people now seem to think I was around during the civil war.

Reading discussions on even Lemmy between people 20 - 30, referencing how anyone over 40 is in like, an entirely different "category" for literally any topic. Makes me feel like a shriveled mummy sometimes.

It was all pretty funny and silly and I didn't think much of it until I tried getting a new job in my same field recently and it became abruptly clear that I was the oldest person applying for those positions even though I had been doing that work and had that experience for years and years, hiring managers always prioritize younger candidates who are more naive, seem more energetic, and are more desperate to succeed so are more willing to compromise on things like pay and benefits.

It took a year and a half to get a new job and that was only because I knew someone who knew someone. Middle-aged people are basically treated like elderly in many fields and hiring managers will always have a bias towards people younger than themselves or people who look or act more like themselves. This isn't malicious, this is just basic human behavior. This is why we had initiatives to remind people of their biases and reconsider candidates who might not seem to fit the "Standard" you might be unconsciously leaning towards.

Not sure if joke or if you're bad at math.

I let you front runners play with 1x and got a 2x with support for CD-RW, and because of it's buffer it only trashed the expensive CD-R's like 1/4 of the time. And I could use the computer a little if I dared!

damn your childhood was lit

whipers ominously

Double decker tape recorders.